1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus for holding and soldering a miniature size chip component on a printed circuit board and more particularly relates to a portable device for facilitating electronic hobbyists and circuit developers in surface mounting and soldering a miniature SMD chip component on a printed circuit board or de-soldering it therefrom.
2. Background Art
Heretofore, it has been problematic for an electronic hobbyist and circuit developer in handling and soldering a surface mounted device, commonly referred to as an SMD chip, on a printed circuit board in fabricating a prototype electronic circuit. Generally, an SMD chip has the physical dimensions of 0.12 inch by 0.06 inch or 0.08 inch by 0.05 inch or 0.04 inch by 0.02 inch, and a height of about 0.025 inch. With such extremely small physical dimensions, it is very difficult and awkward to fetch and to place the SMD chip at a selected position on the printed circuit board, and maintaining it in position while soldering it onto the board. A pair of tweezers are commonly employed for manually picking up an SMD chip and placing it on the printed circuit board, and/or other means must be employed for retaining it in place while soldering it to the board otherwise the chip would be displaced from the desired position by the melted solder. Firstly, considerable care must be exercised in picking up an SMD chip with the tweezers, as the chip would fall off the tweezers if an insufficient clamping force is applied; on the other hand, the SMD chip would readily pop out from the tweezers if too much force is applied. Furthermore, the manual operation of maintaining the chip in place with the tweezers or other holding means during soldering, is also extremely difficult to carry out since the tweezers or holding means must be held in place, while having simultaneously to feed solder with a solder wire to the chip and to apply heat to the solder with a soldering iron. All these different tasks may not be carried out simultaneously by a single person.
Devices employing vacuum suction and/or pre-coated adhesive applied on the printed circuit board for resolving the above problems have been proposed. However, such devices are very complex in construction, and are still difficult to operate; and moreover they are far too expensive to acquire by a hobbyist or an individual electronic circuit developer for making prototype electronic circuits.